


Silver and Green

by VitaLupum



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 13:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/837226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VitaLupum/pseuds/VitaLupum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: The Spine sacrificing his life to save Michael.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver and Green

The Spine can see the car as it drifts towards him with the unhurried speed of a glacier on a lazy day. The headlights make his silver skin burn white as diamonds as it screeches on, the night air cool against his skin, and he sees everything, all of a sudden.

They were crossing the road after a gig, intent on nothing more than a few drinks for the humans and the chance to be out and about for the robots when a screeching noise had cracked the air. The Spine had turned to see Michael halfway across the road, cheerfully whistling, and a silver Tesla Roadster hurtling down the road towards him. It was going to hit him, and at the speed it was going, Michael was going to die if it did so. So The Spine had reacted in the only way he knew, and had filled Michael’s future with a faceful of road and his own future with an ever-growing faceful of car. It is, in fact, all he can see. No, that is a lie.

He can also see Michael, who, in this bizarre slow-motion world they all seem to be in, is still tumbling forward. The Spine has calculated that, in the projected arc of his fall, he will land outside of the car’s path. He will suffer minor lacerations to his hands, bruising to his left elbow, which he will fall onto; lesions on his knees that will take longer to heal up as his flesh is bare where his shorts end. He wonders what it is like to have skin that crumples and breaks, and yet repairs itself. Michael will also have a palm shaped bruised at the small of, ironically, his spine.

The car’s headlights are not enough to cancel out the green of his eyes. He sees it reflect on the silver bonnet, the glass of the windscreen, the eyes of the driver. It’s their fault, he calculates with ease, numbers flickering through his mind in seconds. They’ve taken some intoxicant, some substance, he sees, watching their eyes, hearing the pulse of their heartbeat. They shouldn’t be driving.

The bumper strikes his torso, and then all is noise.

“Spine!”

That’s Rabbit, he thinks, muzzily. Something has happened. He isn’t sure what, since his optical receptors are out. So is his capacity for movement. Everything seems to have shut off. He cannot see. Cannot feel. Cannot sense anything. He can only hear.

“He pushed me.” Michael, his voice shaken and breathless. “He pushed me out of the way of that damn car.”

“Spine?! C-c-can you hear me?!” Rabbit sounds closer now, and he sound absolutely distraught.

“Steve, get Rabbit, Jon and Hatchworth away from him,” Michael orders in a voice still shaken, and there is a howl that ends in a mechanical screech as someone is dragged away from him. He guesses Rabbit. “Give him some air.”

“He doesn’t need air,” he hears Jon whisper reedily. “He’s a robot. That means you’re gonna fix him, right?”

There is no noise for a moment, and then someone kneels next to him.

“Spine? You still there?” Michael sounds almost heartbroken. That is odd, and yet, oddly… comforting. The Spine struggles to remember how to move his lips, and somehow conjures up the power.

“Yes. I am here.” His voice is flat and metallic, the human tones stripped away by the car that hit him. “I saved you.” He pauses. “I am glad.”

“Spine, hold in there,” Michael says, and there is a metallic clank that The Spine can tell is Michael grasping his hand. “Spine, we’re going to get you back. We’re gonna get you fixed up, okay?”

“It is very dark. My optical receptors aren’t functioning,” The Spine says. His voice is slurred and broken, and he keeps forgetting the end of the sentence as he goes to say it. “I’m… pleased to end like this.”

“Spine, shut up,” Michael says, and the hysteria in his voice tells The Spine he is crying. But even the noises are beginning to get faint now, and as he slides away, leaving his body to become nothing but scrap metal, he hears the man let out a choked sob.


End file.
